Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s 1970 film “Pratidwandi” is set to be screened at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the classics section, which will run from May 17 to May 28, 2022.
“Pratidwandi” was the first installation of Ray’s Calcutta trilogy, which comprises two other films “Seemabaddha” and “Jana Aranya.”
“A young college graduate is struggling to find a job. He lives in a flat with his younger, employed sister, revolutionary brother and widowed mother. The strain of the situation ultimately causes him to hallucinate,” reads the official synopsis of “Pratidwandi.”
The film has been restored under the National Film Heritage Mission and will be presented by the National Film Development Corporation of India.
Satyajit Ray penned the script based on an earlier novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay.
G Aravindan’s 1978 film “Thamp,” restored under the Film Heritage Mission, will also be part of the classics section of the festival.
Aravindan’s son Ramu wrote in a statement, “Aravindan’s movies were seen and discussed widely in the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s as carriers of a unique but very specific kind of visual-poetic sensibility. That reputation endured even as a younger generation of viewers and filmmakers grew up. His reflective kind of cinema continued to be discussed. Only this time, it was mostly by word of mouth – good digitizations of these movies were hardly available. Quite ironic for a very visual filmmaker! "
